SPRINGFIELD, Mass., June 17 (UPI) -- A 23-year-old white man pleaded guilty to torching a predominantly black church in Massachusetts hours after Barack Obama was elected the U.S. president.
Benjamin Haskell, one of three white men charged in the arson, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Springfield, Mass., to conspiracy and damaging religious property because of race, color or ethnic characteristics.
Under a plea bargain, he faces at least nine years in prison, three years of supervised release and a $7,500 fine for conspiring to burn Springfield's Macedonia Church of God in Christ in the wee hours of Nov. 5, 2008.
The church was under construction and nearly three-fourths finished. The fire destroyed nearly the entire structure.
Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 29.
Haskell's lawyer, federal public defender Charles P. McGinty, had no immediate comment, The Boston Globe reported.
Haskell and Thomas Gleason Jr., 22, and Michael Jacques, 25, both of Springfield, allegedly broke into the church through a window after midnight following Obama's victory, investigators said.
They then poured gasoline inside and outside the church and ignited it, the investigators said.
Four days later, Haskell and Jacques drove to the charred rubble with an unidentified associate and laughed, an affidavit of an FBI agent stated.
"We did it," Haskell allegedly told the associate, who later cooperated with investigators.
When the associate, who voted for Obama, asked why the men set the fire, Haskell replied, "Because it was a black church," the affidavit stated.
Gleason's trial in the case is to start Wednesday. No trial date has been set for Jacques.
